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The $103 million urban waterway is designed to reduce combined sewage overflows into Mill Creek, as part of a federal consent decree to bring the Metropolitan Sewer District into compliance with the Clean Water Act. Before this project, there was not one drop of rain that would fall on the Lick Run watershed and make its way to the Mill Creek without first going through our combined sewer and mixing with sewage, said MSD Deputy Director MaryLynn Lodor. That doesn t happen now.
Lick Run was buried about a hundred years ago and put into a 19.5-foot-diameter pipe to flow directly into the Mill Creek. Now, the stream flows openly again in a bed of rock from homes in the neighborhood and the original stream.